The only instance where having noisy neighbors is a good thing

Noisy shrimp may be helping gray whales find their prey. Jes Burns, OPB.org, writes about snapping shrimp, a variety of shrimp researchers at Oregon State University have heard, but not seen. How do these shrimp make so much sound? Burns writes:

There’s a popping static created by thousands of shrimp claws pushing out jets of water at extremely high speed. The speed and disturbance create a tiny bubble that immediately collapses, creating a noise so loud and strong it can to stun prey a few inches away.

The researchers noticed that “the rocky areas where the shrimp live are also home to swarms of tiny zooplankton that whales love,” which made them wonder whether the whales use the shrimp as a tool to find food since they use sound to find prey. More study will be done to determine whether the hypothesis is correct.

And if, in the interim, you want to hear was thousands of snapping shrimp sound like, click below: